Michael Magness wrote: "...I had also noticed something odd about the action at a glance, the "felt" around the bushings wasn't red, it was white. When I looked closer I saw they were all Teflon bushings, the entire whippen and the hammer flanges are Teflon bushings. Someone, on purpose, replaced all of the original whippens and flanges with new ones with Teflon bushings. Perhaps it had vertigris and this was a cheap way of eliminating it for a dealer concerned with salability AND not having it come back to bite him on the behind a few years later? It has an average gram/touch weight of 60 to 62gms. It needs regulation but shouldn't the lower friction of the Teflon bushings make for a lighter touch? I have NO experience with teflon bushings advice please, remember this action WASN'T designed for them> The hammers don't appear to be anything extraordinary, they look like stock hammers from Apsco or Schaff from the 70's...." Hi Michael, I'm certainly not the expert here, but a couple things you mention about the action jump out at me. If my historical knowledge is correct, teflon parts would have been current Steinway stock in 1977, so the only way to have avoided them would have been to have used after market parts, which due to the slightly different shape of the scalloped flange, present their own set of problems. So, the technician was probably making a preference judgement there. But in theory, at least, the teflon parts should have been a geometrically accurate replacement for the originals, right? Or does this piano have the slanted capstans which introduces a whole different can of worms? But, there is nothing inherently bad about teflon parts. They can be quite serviceable as long as the technician understands how to service them. Then, I'm going to guess that the APSCO or Schaff hammers, if that is what they are, were probably heavier than the action is designed for, so there is a source of extra weight. I've got an old Sohmer in my clientele that someone else rebuilt with similar hammers. They are huge, and the action weighs in the 70s gram range. Some of my clients are under the impression that an old Steinway is supposed to be, and actually seem to prefer them to be heavier than the 50 gram (and below) actions we set up today, so this piano may not be too far outside of what some players expect. I've seen actions rebuilt with mismatched parts that feel as heavy as lead, but the players just love them. I don't think $5K for a rebuilt B would have been outside retail market value in 1977. Perhaps even low. I know that USC was paying more than $6K for new Ls in 1976. Problem was and remains today, that too many dealers don't allow rebuilds to be done properly, will sell them as "restored to like new". The buying public doesn't know the difference and the dealer pockets a windfall profit on the deal. The piano needed a block in 1977, but a new block doubles the cost of restringing, so it doesn't take a genius to figure out that the dealer made that call -- not the technician. Still, she got 30 years out of it. Not too bad at that. My thoughts, Jeff Tanner -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut_ptg.org/attachments/20090103/45f47525/attachment.html>
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